Entitlement

I was over at ER nurse's blog and she was talking about how sick she was of people feeling as though they were entitled to anything and everything. I have to whole-heartedly agree. I'm relatively young, but with old school values. Sometimes I just don't get it.

The People who piss me off the most are the people who feel entitled, for seemingly no reason. I think little disrespectful things piss me off more than major incidents. Most of the time I can blow someone off if they're in my face yelling at me. I can either chalk it up to them having a bad day, having a death wish, or just being generally ignorant.

A good example of "the little things" happened today. I had just come to work and was cleaning up the previous shift's mess (This in and of itself pissed me off.)When a gentleman with a specimen to drop off decided to come up to my window and my counter and start moving things out of the way so he'd have a place to put his laptop so he could start filling out the order for the specimen.

Problem Number 1. Don't ever move shit that doesn't belong to you. Especially when someone is working in that exact area already

Problem Number 2. If you don't work somewhere, respect the area you walk into, We're not Fucking burger king, it isn't always you're way, right away. Guess what The Customer isn't always right at a hospital.

Problem Number 3. You need to have everything you just did on my counter completed before you come to the lab. It's not okay to label a specimen when it's already to the lab. Per protocol you need to label that shit bedside, or at least not when you're standing if front of me.

The one decent thing about working in a hospital, and not having to do patient care, is what I mentioned earlier, we're not burger king. We have written established protocol. There should be zero gray area. If I say you're specimen is unacceptable, it's unacceptable. There is no, "I want to speak with you're manager" bullshit. Written procedures back me up, as opposed to a manager's discretion. If I put my name on a result, I have the right to accept or refuse anything based on my own discretion and established protocol.

As much as I'd like to empathize with ER nurse, I have a hard time. Many times, the people who make my life difficult are the nurses, mostly because I rarely, if ever have to actually deal with a patient unless it's over the phone, in which case I'll just hang up. Sometimes nurses feel entitled to results, right now. It just can't happen, we have an established pecking order, just because you or the doctor you're calling for want the results before you go to lunch, doesn't mean it's going to happen. They're also the one's who want to call and bitch me out when I say I can't or won't take a specimen because it's hemolyzed or incorrectly labeled. The only thing calling down and bitching accomplishes is it pisses me off and takes time away from me completing your test. You're really only hurting your patient.